Into the turn

THE TEN ZULU REPORT, LEG 1, DAY 16

The vanishing point of the straight is slowly widening to reveal a long, fast, banked corner - time to pick a new gear, ignore the concrete wall on the outside (actually, it’s more like the beaches of Rio) - focus on the exit, keep the power on and into the corner we go…

At 10:00 ZULU this morning the leading pack were sailing downwind on port gybe, spinnakers up, bows slowly turning east as the wind shifted to take them towards Cape Town. The long straight on this ever-changing race track has got them to 20degS, but it’s nearly over.

It’s been another day with everyone on port tack, another day with everyone headed south. Ok, so I know I said I like it to be quiet on the weekends, but this is starting to get ridiculous… I could just about get away with changing the date and running yesterday’s article again. So, in the interests of brevity and lack of repetition (always encouraged by creative writing courses), I’d suggest that you all start there, because today is going to be something of an extended series of footnotes to yesterday…

Done? Then we’ll begin…

Sheer horsepower has dominated much of the last two days of sailing – and the alpha male battle has resumed between Ericsson 4 and PUMA for control of the herd. Ericsson 4 have been making the running, and like Paula Radcliffe in New York, they have stretched the leading pack.

Non-stop express

It’s still not about the Distance to Leader (DTL) this morning - and if you needed proof of that you only had to check the leaderboard last night, when Telefonica Blue briefly took the ‘lead’. They are 90 miles north of Ericsson 4 – and they, er... aren’t winning.

It is all about how fast and how far south you can get, to catch a ride on the low pressure system that’s due to depart Brazil, headed for Cape Town, non-stop, express, leaving Tuesday 10:15 am (ok, I made that last bit up, I'm not that sure about the time). But I have done some measurements for you - yes, even though it’s Sunday, there’s no limit to my endeavours on your behalf…

At yesterday morning’s TEN ZULU, Ericsson 4 was the most southerly boat, with Telefonica Black 16 miles north of her, at the back of the leading group of four. All day yesterday, Fernando Echavarri and his Spanish team just about held onto Torben Grael and the flying Swedes – at 19:00 the gap had opened to just over 20 miles. Then, overnight, Ericsson 4 opened the throttle and powered away – the gap was 32 miles by this morning.

I think the reason is that we’re into a completely different type of sailing. Take a look at today’s graph of Heading (HDG in the Data Centre) and True Wind Angle (TWA) for Ericsson 4, Telefonica Black and Team Russia. For the leaders, the TWA reached about 130 yesterday evening – so by sunset, the spinnakers were up, the boat was flat, and the upwind bump and grind (and you were thinking R Kelly?) of the last couple of days was finally over (to widespread relief in the emails – Mrs Read you really should read that one).

No more stability sailing, now we’re going downwind – and now Telefonica Black starts to struggle. It’s also possible that Ericsson 4 sailed into more breeze overnight, but as the general trend is for them to lead into a softening wind, this seems a less likely explanation.

Like an F1 car in third gear

Also worth noting is that Ericsson 4 and Telefonica Black’s Heading doesn’t go east of south (the noticeable spike) until the wind angle is all the way back to around 135 (reading the scale on the left in degrees - the minus sign tells you that they are on port tack). A TWA of 140 is about as wide as you can sail with these boats, before they become inefficient.

(I’m not going to try to explain why, but sailing a Volvo Open 70 at a TWA of 165 would be like going down the straight at Monte Carlo in a Formula 1 car in third gear).

So this is a measure of how badly everyone still wants to go south - we are only now seeing the Heading twitch to the east because they have been forced to sail that way, as the wind continues to rotate anti-clockwise, and they can no longer hold their Heading steady and just retrim to the new TWA (by now, I’m hoping that a sentence like that doesn’t need a technical content warning).

The changing sailing conditions have had an impact on the struggle at the front. At 10:00 ZULU yesterday morning, Ericsson 4 was five miles further south than PUMA. By the time the spinnakers went up, there was just a mile between them – PUMA slowly overhauling Ericsson 4 during a day of reaching. But since then, the balance of power has shifted again, and after a night of medium air running (around 15 knots True Wind Speed (TWS)), Ericsson 4 had opened the gap back out to five miles again – 1-1 then...

But the same transition brings a Quantum of Solace, a tiny crumb of comfort for Green Dragon (although not for fans of the Bond franchise, apparently the new movie is all over the place).

Last night, Ian Walker talked in a bit more detail about his speed issues... ‘Now the wind has dropped and freed up a bit and we are no longer in 'stability reaching' conditions we can feel a bit more confident about our speed. Our speed problem is simple - we have 460kg less lead in our bulb so power reaching and upwind in strong winds it will be difficult.’ It’s the ‘R’ word again – Righting Moment – that we dealt with in Day 13’s TEN ZULU.

(One interesting aside that scores a high technical content warning (and thanks to Trevor for pointing this out) is that PUMA went through the scoring gate with a reef in, but – and make of this what you will - the Green Dragon had full sail (sorry, can’t find a photo of them to prove it).

At 10:00 ZULU yesterday morning Ericsson 4 had blasted past the Dragon and opened a gap to the south of about four miles. And by the evening the deficit was a painful (for Dragon-ites) 12 miles. But then the full-size masthead spinnakers went up and the game changed. By this morning the gap was only a couple of miles different – unlike Telefonica Black, the Dragon appears to have just about held her own with the leader of the pack with the ‘big gear’ up.

'Calm before the storm'

All right, what next? The emails remain full of preparations and prospects for the incoming low pressure. Aboard Green Dragon, navigator Ian Moore reflected last night, ‘It's the calm before the storm and we are all taking a bit of time today to check our areas in preparation for the "Nam Off" we are expecting early next week.’

The Nam Off is the arrival of the low pressure system that featured in yesterday’s discussion of Predicted Routes – and Ian goes onto say that, ‘those not onboard [the low pressure] could have a very long walk to Cape Town.’ So, what of the oncoming freight train that’s about to roll off the coast of Brazil?

The Predicted Routes in the Race Viewer now show that everyone will have to gybe to get through the light air of the high pressure ridge – which is why they’ve all been so desperate to hold west of south for so long. The worst of the light air is overnight tonight, by tomorrow morning it should be freshening from the north, and it keeps blowing harder until dogs on chains should be fearful.

But the numbers look even more apocalyptic for anyone who doesn’t catch the ride. Check out the numbers in the ‘Predicted’ tab of the Homepage Leaderboard, or in the Prediction Data Table in the Data Centre. Delta Lloyd, currently in sixth, but the most easterly of the back markers, could get to within 50 miles of the lead in three days' time. But then, as the low spins up and heads east, they miss out - and their deficit balloons to over six hundred miles in just a couple of days. Let's hope it doesn't get that bad.

Things don’t look much better for Team Russia or Delta Lloyd, and even Telefonica Blue will drop off the back of the leading group. But by the middle of the coming week, the leading pack of four will still be tight – and it’ll be girded loins and white knuckles all the way to Cape Town.